FORTY-FIVE years of Thatcherism have left our health, social care, local government and education systems wrecked, Mick Lynch told a packed eve-of-Gala in Durham on Friday night.

Addressing the joint Campaign for Trade Union Freedom-Institute of Employment Rights fringe meeting, the RMT leader said the new government had a chance to change course from the “unabated” neoliberalism that had hollowed out the public realm ever since the defeat of the miners’ strike 40 years ago.

But unions should not trust to politicians to do that: “We are an independent workers’ movement and we believe in socialism — that’s what we want, not just some reforms,” he urged.

Labour MP Andy McDonald, who convened the union task force that developed the original New Deal for Workers that — in diluted form — comprised a key part of Labour’s manifesto, said a single status of worker with full rights from day one would reduce the incentive for outsourcing, which has driven down pay and conditions across whole sectors of the economy.

Labour in power should set a target of abolishing the need for foodbanks — which have proliferated under 14 years of Tory rule and are increasingly relied on by people in full-time work — within a term, he demanded.

Among a packed line-up of leading trade unionists, Civil Service union PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote challenged Labour to change its tune on public-sector pay, pointing out that after the longest period of real-terms pay cuts in 200 years 46 per cent of PCS members were eligible for universal credit (UC) despite being in work. 

Top barrister Lord John Hendy KC said this was not unusual, with 38 per cent of UC claimants — 2.5 million people — in work, indicating heavy public subsidisation of poverty pay by bad employers.

The only way out of the situation was to restore collective bargaining across all sectors, he stressed, pointing to a recent pay and conditions agreement won by unions in Germany for all retail workers — “we should be doing that here.” He welcomed Labour’s promise of collective bargaining structures for social care and school support staff, but said it urgently needed extending to the rest of the economy.